How Gmail's blocking of email is changing Avalon

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Vangelo (here)

Posted by ThePythonicCow (here)

Posted by Miller (here)
but I didn't return to the forum automatically afterwards; I don't know whether that's a glitch

Note to self: look into this (not returning to forum from Paypal link).

FYI: There is no "Return to Forum" button on the "How to Donate" page https://projectavalon.net/donation.html

True - no such button - and it's unlikely that I'll be adding any such button. Bill likely has other priorities, and I certainly have other interests. I'm more of a back end server guy than a user interface guy, and so far, there's no shortage of server work to keep me amused.

[Agape]

Thanks for holding up to this Paul. I can already see how they’ve got millions of people to pickle by demanding constant upgrade and new compatible devices.

After they “helped the world” for few years, got masses to World Wide Web and connected they forgot to say that new costlier device will be required every year or two. Discount for kids and the party members. Whichever party.

Sorry for the rant.

I’m myself wary of the instance Google too will demand “new modern device” from me out of sudden.

Forgot it’s a run against time

Thank you so much for all the effort


🙏🦢🙏

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Agape (here)
I’m myself wary of the instance Google too will demand “new modern device” from me out of sudden.

I get my mobile phone from Swappa ... old used mobile's are entirely adequate for my very limited use ... still need to upgrade once every few years ... but not to current models.

[leavesoftrees]

[QUOTE=ThePythonicCow;1613166]

Posted by ThePythonicCow (here)
.
However the missions of Gmail and Fastmail are, as I noted in the first post of this present thread, fundamentally different. Gmail lives primarily to serve the email needs of various marketing and intelligence organizations, whereas Fastmail lives to serve the email needs of technically savvy users and small to medium groups. These missions are fundamentally different, which is reflected in their spam management.

FAstmail is not a free email service. I cant remember the annual fee $US25?

[Agape]

Posted by ThePythonicCow (here)

Posted by Agape (here)
I’m myself wary of the instance Google too will demand “new modern device” from me out of sudden.

I get my mobile phone from Swappa ... old used mobile's are entirely adequate for my very limited use ... still need to upgrade once every few years ... but not to current models.

I don’t have computer: the smartphone is my only computer device.

My MacBook Pro was sold due to unfortunate steps against my person in 2017 , in emergency, so also iPad Air ( tablet).

I don’t have “home”, conventionally speaking and the last I left the only home I had that’s not going to come back was in 2016.


Still calling self Lucky Lucy

🍵

[thirtythree]

Protonmail is a secure email service i use. It's been great for the last 10 years.

[Le Chat]

Posted by thirtythree (here)
Protonmail is a secure email service i use. It's been great for the last 10 years.

Unless you have a computer crash and lose all your stored passwords, like I did.
It's been impossible to get back into Proton because of their strict rules, so every contact & etc has been lost forever.

[Kryztian]

Posted by Le Chat (here)

Posted by thirtythree (here)
Protonmail is a secure email service i use. It's been great for the last 10 years.

Unless you have a computer crash and lose all your stored passwords, like I did.
It's been impossible to get back into Proton because of their strict rules, so every contact & etc has been lost forever.

That is pretty much the case with most email servers. I had the same problem with Yahoo. And this happened after they allowed millions of their users accounts to be hacked.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Posted by ThePythonicCow (here)

Posted by Vangelo (here)

Posted by ThePythonicCow (here)

Posted by Miller (here)
but I didn't return to the forum automatically afterwards; I don't know whether that's a glitch

Note to self: look into this (not returning to forum from Paypal link).

FYI: There is no "Return to Forum" button on the "How to Donate" page https://projectavalon.net/donation.html

True - no such button - and it's unlikely that I'll be adding any such button. Bill likely has other priorities, and I certainly have other interests. I'm more of a back end server guy than a user interface guy, and so far, there's no shortage of server work to keep me amused.

User interface being my domain I was able to assist with this request. The donations page now has a Return to Forum button. It was fiddly as anything, and came out a little larger than intended, but it does the job.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by leavesoftrees (here)
FAstmail is not a free email service. I cant remember the annual fee $US25?

Yes - that's how they make money. Once upon a time they had a free tier ... not now.

Plans start at about $28/year ($US 2.33/month, to be more exact).

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Mark (Star Mariner) (here)
User interface being my domain I was able to assist with this request. The donations page now has a Return to Forum button. It was fiddly as anything, and came out a little larger than intended, but it does the job.

Awesome - thanks.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Kryztian (here)
Unless you have a computer crash and lose all your stored passwords, like I did.
It's been impossible to get back into Proton because of their strict rules, so every contact & etc has been lost forever.

That is, or should be, pretty much the case with most email servers.

Since email is the primary tool used to recover other accounts, such as online access to one's banking accounts, email has to make an effort to be secure, and email can't as easily rely on email for password recovery.

... backups, backups and more backups, here, there and yonder, of both email history and login credentials to all valued websites

(Granted, not everyone arranges their life to have a living room that looks more like a computer data center, or to even have a living room.)

[leavesoftrees]

Posted by Le Chat (here)

Posted by thirtythree (here)
Protonmail is a secure email service i use. It's been great for the last 10 years.

Unless you have a computer crash and lose all your stored passwords, like I did.
It's been impossible to get back into Proton because of their strict rules, so every contact & etc has been lost forever.

Yes I lost my login details and a Proton key or something. Couldnt get back in. Would never use Proton again. It's too secure

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by ThePythonicCow (here)
.

Here's how Avalon has been and will be adapting to this environment.

Avalon's response to Gmail's AI bots has and will effect Avalon members in three ways.

1. We've moved our forum email that forum members, applicants, and staff use in various ways, from Gmail, to Fastmail. The main effect of this email migration has been some email outages, when this migration didn't go as smoothly as we liked.
   
2. The various email messages that our Avalon server generates are being refined (under the covers) to look more individual, and to avoid the patterns that Gmail's bot detectors can easily detect. Unless I make a mistake, this won't effect Avalon's members.
   
3. The most controversial adaption: I intend (if Bill consents) to restrict heavy use of email notifications (of posts to subscribed threads and similar) by members who are using gmail accounts. This will effect less than a handful of users, who can either switch their Avalon email address to some provider other than gmail, or not get their daily bucket full of notifications.

Quite a bit has changed since I wrote the above a couple of weeks ago.

I had us setup, a couple of weeks ago, to use Fastmail in two roles, just as we had been using Gmail for years:

1. Our Avalon forum server sent to Fastmail all its automated messages (Happy Birthday email, password and email change verifications, notifications of posts to subscribed threads and similar, and email generated by the "Send Email" (to individuals) or "Contact Us" (to Bill, mods and admins).
2. Our "staff" (Bill, mods and admins) used Fastmail interact with others via email, receiving, viewing, storing and responding to email to Bill, mods, and admins).

That's changed.

• We, the "staff" still use Fastmail to interact with others via email.
• But now our server sends its automated messages to Smtp2go.com.

It turns out that interactive email conversations, person to person, is a different specialty than distributing streams of automated email messages.

Smtp2go.com specializes in the later - sending the streams of automatically generated email messages from our forum server out to the various recipients.

That duo - Fastmail for the human-to-human interactive email, and Smtp2go.com for the automatically generated "transactional" email, is working quite well. I recommend that combination to others who have email needs similar to ours.

For example, I no longer need to worry about the heavy use of email notifications (of posts to subscribed threads and similar) by members who are using gmail accounts. That email now goes out via our Smtp2go.com account, and they are quite skilled in guiding me to make sure that Gmail will accept all that email without hesitation.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by ThePythonicCow (here)
I had us setup, a couple of weeks ago [early May 2024], to use Fastmail in two roles, just as we had been using Gmail for years:

1. Our Avalon forum server sent to Fastmail all its automated messages (Happy Birthday email, password and email change verifications, notifications of posts to subscribed threads and similar, and email generated by the "Send Email" (to individuals) or "Contact Us" (to Bill, mods and admins).
2. Our "staff" (Bill, mods and admins) used Fastmail interact with others via email, receiving, viewing, storing and responding to email to Bill, mods, and admins).

That's changed.

• We, the "staff" still use Fastmail to interact with others via email.
• But now our server sends its automated messages to Smtp2go.com.

A footnote, added over a year later:

Steve Gibson, of Spinrite disk repair, and the weekly "Security Now" podcast, fame spent a fair bit of time this week covering Gmail's latest hiccups ... sending large portions of incoming email directly to spam. Even Steve's own email to his subscribers, which is some of the least spammy email out there, was getting filtered out by Gmail as spam.

Fastmail's and Smtp2Go's priorities are much better aligned with Avalon's.

• Fastmail (for communication to and between Bill and the Avalon staff) and
• Smtp2Go (for email sent from our Avalon server, such as to prospective new members.)

I remain glad I switched our Avalon email services last year to Fastmail and Smtp2Go.

[leavesoftrees]

Fastmail is an annual subscription

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by ThePythonicCow (here)
I remain glad I switched our Avalon email services last year to Fastmail and Smtp2Go.

Yes! The changeover was a bit more of a hassle than we'd anticipated, but Paul persisted (as he always does!) to get it all working perfectly, and we ended up saving about $75-80/month in fees.

(Yes, Fastmail is a subscription service, but it's a LOT cheaper than Gmail for an 'organization', as Avalon was considered by them to be.)